Introduction

I'm Anthony Salinas. I am currently a freshman and play on the Butler baseball team. I'm from Wichita, Kansas and graduated from Bishop Carroll High School. I have an awesome girlfriend named Briana and she is a senior at Bishop Carroll. I have one brother and three sisters. I plan on returning next year to play another year of baseball.

Learning Profile

1. Some of the themes that stuck out to me this semester was the time management, coping with change, and reading. The time management stuck out to me because now that I am in college I really need to know how to mange my time wisely. With playing baseball I really need to focus on how I plan my schedule. I also have to make sure I am able to have school time and be able to study and get work done for the classes. Coping with change also stood out because there is a lot of change from high school to college. I have new classes, new friends, and a new lifestyle. All of this new stuff was really starting to stress me out. The third thing that I realized was "read", I didn't really like to read very much in high school, but I've learned I have to read.

2. I think some of my strengths as a learner is I can memorize a lot of things at once. I can retain a lot of information in my brain when I am studying. When I am in class I have to write down notes so that I remember, and then i can go back and study my notes to learn it better. I think that some of the things I could help a student learn coming into this class is learning how to get the blog going and how to use the my courses tab to get the homework assignments.

3. Some weaknesses I noticed I had was I can't concentrate very well when it comes to reading. I tend to just read the words, but not understand what is being said in the text. I know when we read something in class some of the other students can read what is to be read and tell you all about what happened. Me on the other had, I don't know what was said because it's hard for me to concentrate on what is being said. One task that seems to take up most of my time is studying. I know how to study I just need to be harder on myself. I need to have no distractions or I won't be able to study, like I would be able to if it was quite. I need to work on my time management, because I am a huge procrastinator and always struggle getting things done.

4. I know a big thing that has help me with this class is time management. I definitely have gotten better with managing my time. When i first started this class I didn't ever want to do the blogs. Even though this class helped me with my time management I still fall back into my old self. This last few weeks I have got many projects and papers done, but slacked off doing my blogs. This is why I am still doing some of them the day before its do. Coping with Change was another big thing that I learned in this class. We go through a lot of things switching from high school life to college life. The most important skill I learned was how to store things in my long term memory from my short term memory. This was able to help a lot when it came to studying for test.

5. The big things I thought were important to me were Coping with Change and Time Management. These were very important to me, because they were two things I needed most. i am not very good at managing my time. I need to be able to work studying into my schedule that involves baseball practice in the afternoon as well as baseball practice at 5:45 in the morning. Coping with Change was big to me because I wanted to be able to handle the differences and still be able to do well in school and everything else. The one thing that we did that I didn't think was that important was community service. Whether I do community service or not, it will not impact my grades in school. Community service is good to do don't get me wrong but if I don't do it, it will not affect my grades.

6. I thought the course was a very good course. In class we went through many discussions about each of the major topics. This was a plus in the class, I enjoyed coming to class and discussing with my peers about each topic. I don't think that anything should really be dropped from the class. Everything that we learned was good information for us to succeed as a student in college. I also don't think anything should be added, because then there my be to much information thrown at us to understand. This course was constructed very well and I am sure it will continue to be well constructed.

7. The three most important things you should do in this class to keep your sanity are, ask questions, be dedicated, and time management. Sometimes classes that do a lot of work can get boring or confusing. When going to class 2 days a week, you can ask the teacher questions, as well as ask your peers questions about the major topics. Make sure that you know everything that the teacher wants and expects. This is very crucial in this class because if you do not follow the instructions you will not succeed when you do your blog. When doing the blog, make sure you do a little bit each week so that you don't get behind. If you mange your time wisely then you will be able to get your work done in plenty of time.

8.I think that all of these topics can be incorporated into my life. Some of them more than the other but each topic is very important. I think that some of these topics are happening in my life right now or I have already done. I have already done some community service and academic planning but right now time management and academic honesty are working in my life now. I image that these and others will play a bigger part in my life as a get older. Time management will play a bigger role in my life when I get married and have kids, and work also. The skills that I have taken from this class will also help me in the future with dealing with new challenges that come my way.

Butler Resources

Some of the things that Damon needs to change is his partying and study habits. Partying could be a big part of college, but in reality you need to realize the real reason why your here, to learn and get an education. Even though Damon is trying hard in his classes and studying, he needs to work harder. Damon should consider limiting his partying time to weekends or maybe not partying at all until his grades are up. Damon could help himself out by finding some off campus help, or maybe even considering tutoring. Damon will never be able to be like his roommate and be able to fly through school with A's and B's without trying hard. Some of the resources available at Butler is the tutoring lab upstairs in the 600 building. This lab is open through most of the day and there is a regular tutor to help you in all subjects in school. There is also counseling on campus if Damon needs to talk about his drinking habits and maybe the issues he has with his parents. Damon could find quiet time to study in the library which is in the 600 building to concentrate without getting distracted.

Time Management

Time Management is an important thing that goes along with college. You need to know how to manage your time, because of all the stress in college. There are different ways for you to manage you time. A good way to manage your time wisely is to sit down and set goals. When ever I don't manage my time I am so stressed out and overwhelmed. I start to worry, then get in a bad mood and take it out on others, and also I start to break down. I tell myself that I can't do it after a while. When I manage my time well, I feel good about myself and relaxed. Whenever everyone else is struggling to get there big project done, I just sit back and laugh because I managed my time well and I can do the things that are fun. I always like to set reasonable deadlines for myself that way I can get what I need done. High School was allot different then college when it came to time management. In high school I always had time to do my homework during class and in study hall. In college we don't have study hall and don't get to do our work in class. Most of the homework in college is reading. It was very tough for me at first to adapt to the college life of studying at home and doing all my homework at night when I was tired. There was one night that I stayed up all night writing a research paper and doing lab reports. I feel that I am slowly maturing in my judgement, I am starting to realize the importance of getting good grades. In high school I didn't get good grades because I didn't put in the time or the effort to get grades like I do now in college. I had no time management then, but now that I've matured I have found school to be easier.

Community Service

Hunger is a very big issue in the world today, that needs to be a priority to others. There are many people these days trying to solve this issue but not nearly enough. A way to fix this problem is to look at the poverty level. Most of the people today that are with out food are the ones that are living on the streets, under the bridges. If people are living on the streets then most likely they do not have money to buy food. So the first part to solving the hunger issue is to help fix the number of poor people living on the streets. The next step is to educate the wealthy on how big of a problem hunger is. The wealthy should be obligated to giving some of there money to certain agencies that help the poor and hungry. If wealthy people are not educated about this then there is know way that they can give there money. Some wealthy people are kind of "stuck up" so they do not even see homeless people, because they do not go down in the areas of the city where poor people live. They are to good for homeless people they think. Another way of helping out the hungry is to build more "diners" where homeless people can get a meal for free when they have no money. We could make it to where the diners serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This way the homeless will never go without a meal. On a personal level I could go volunteer at the family shelters by handing out food or serving food to others. I could also give 10 % of my paycheck to the homeless shelters, to buy food. If everyone pitched in and game 10% of there check to the homeless shelters, there wouldn't be a starving person in the world.

Coping with Change

There was a big change between high school baseball and college baseball. High school baseball I was a starter as a freshman and always excelled. I was a all-city and all-state player during my high school years. During practices all we would do is play catch, take ground balls, catch fly balls, and hit. We barely did any running, if we ran at all we would only run a couple laps around the field. Our season was only 22 games at the most, including the playoffs and state. I was always a better player than everyone else on my team and always was the one that helped our team win. The pitchers in our league usually were not to good so I was able to get hits whenever I wanted. I had a rude awakening when I got to college and everyone on the team was just as good as me or better. The first practice we had to do 60 yard agility's. I had never done something so hard in my life. I had never puked off running long distance or doing sprints in my life. That day was a different story, I was one of many people on the team that puked from doing this running drill. When it came to the games I put so much pressure on myself that I was struggling with my swing. It was so hard for me to adapt to not being able to hit the ball. I had always been able to hit the ball whenever I wanted to. I went into the biggest hitting slump I ever had been in. I did hitting drill after hitting drill to get out of the slump, but nothing helped. I finally just told myself to relax and hit the ball like I know how to. Towards the end of the fall I came out of my slump and started getting base hits and driving in base runners.

Academic Honesty

A lot of things surround academic honesty like cheating, plagiarism, and lying. Many kids these days do not have and academic honesty. Kids these days will have others do there homework for them and then pay them or buy them lunch or dinner. This is not how kids are suppose to get by classes, they are suppose to learn and do there own work. The definition of plagiarism is to steal and pass off as ones own. Kids result to plagiarism most of the time because of laziness. They need to not procrastinate and get there work done. Another reason why kids cheat is because they don't know what they are doing on the assignment or test, so the only result they thing is to copy off someone else. There is many ways to prevent kids from cheating. The teacher could make sure that all the students know what the assignment is. They can try and develop a students trust, so that maybe the student will think twice about lying to there teacher. Teachers can also outline what the assignment is and make sure the students know what they are doing, so that when they go home they can get right on it and get it done. The last way is as a parent, inject integrity and honesty in your kids, so that this will not be a big problem for them as they get older. These are just some of the ways to help decrease students from cheating. There are many students that don't cheat off other students, but they may help someone out on a assignment or on a test or even a paper. This is still considered cheating, you are not helping the other person out, you are hurting them even more by not making them smarter.